


His Eyes

by sunwoo



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-06
Updated: 2017-10-06
Packaged: 2019-01-09 21:26:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12284700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunwoo/pseuds/sunwoo
Summary: Donghyuck believes that he hates fall and that he always will.





	His Eyes

The thought of Donghyuck ever enjoying fall was inconceivable. The leaves at his feet were abundant; the deciduous trees around him were losing most of their leaves, their colors all ranging from red to yellow. The notably consistent crunching annoyed him in the slightest way, which even then was vehement. The sounds frustrated him for as long as his tendency to mentally yell everytime he stepped on a leaf, was a thing.

His whole life he had thought that leaves are ugly. He didn’t know exactly why, but he knew it had to do with the fact that leaves represent cold, distant death and are useless, annoying-sounding things. They were _ugly_. They were completely—and would forever be—ugly to Lee Donghyuck.

His hands fidgeted in his pocket as a cool breeze swept past him. The coldness of the wind and the feeling of death within him made him think the same phrase he had been saying to himself for the past four minutes: I hate fall.

”Donghyuck!” an immensely familiar voice yelled behind him. He turned around, only to see his friend, Mark. The same boy who he sits next to on the public bus every other day, who he goes with to the local arcade with every Tuesday night, who he enjoys hearing stories about his day from, was Mark Lee.

”Hey, Mark,” Donghyuck smiled as he replied. He slowed down, allowing Mark to catch up to him quite quickly. He noticed Mark’s sweater was almost the same shade of his sunfire-gold glasses, similarly to the way his own jacket reflected his current hair color.

”Dude, you’ll never believe what happened just now,” Mark said, gathering what he hoped was every ounce of Donghyuck’s attention, “I was chillin’ with Renjun and Jeno over at the football field, and Jeno wanted to try to throw a football across the field because he’s like that, y’know? So then, he just trips as he runs to go get the ball, so he’s got pieces of recently cut grass on his face and hair, so he starts yelling about how his,” Mark makes air quotation marks with his hands, “perfectly beautiful, ethereal, world-shaking hair is ruined—“

Donghyuck snorted. His red hair fell in front of his face and covered his eyes, and he instinctively ran his hand through it. Mark smiled at Donghyuck’s short laughter.

”—so Renjun and I don’t know what’s going on so we just run for it and leave Jeno there to finish whatever he was doing. He’s going to be mad when he finds out we left like that—or rather, when he found out ‘cause I’m sure he’d have noticed by now, so that’s it. I think it’s pretty funny.”

”It was funny,” Donghyuck said. “I specifically liked when Jeno started freaking out.”

Mark hummed in response and adjusted his glasses on his nose quickly. The simple action reminded Donghyuck of something he meant to ask Mark.

Ever since the third grade, Mark had glasses. They were the same ones, too: the golden colored glasses they had seen on display outside of the shop besides their favorite video game store. Their younger selves both spent a few seconds to stop and look at them. Donghyuck had said, “I like that color. I want a bike in that color,” and Mark just replied with “yeah, I like that color, too.”

The next day, Mark had those glasses on. Donghyuck didn’t know why. He was never the curious type as a child, so he never asked. Besides, it’s not that it really mattered to him back then. All younger Donghyuck wanted was someone to play with, but over the course of their friendship, he began to think about that much more than he ever thought he would and more than he liked.

Donghyuck hated questioning things, almost as much as he hated fall. He hated questioning things because he believed there is no point in doing so. Why not just let the world keep living the way it is, right? But he let his curiosity get to him. He began to wonder why Mark bought those glasses. Mark could see perfectly fine before he bought them, or else he wouldn’t have been able to read cars’ license plates across the street as a part of one of their creative, made-up games.

As they turned the corner, Donghyuck nodded his head towards the empty bench at the close bus stop and with an agreeing nod from Mark, the two boys sat next to each other.

There was a short silence that only lasted a few seconds.

”Why do you,” Donghyuck paused, thinking of the right words to say which unfortunately didn’t come to him, “why do you wear glasses? I know you can see just fine, so don’t lie to me, Mark.”

Mark blinked. He looked to his right and took in the sight of the sunset behind the nearby trees. Their branches looked like lightning forks pointing in numerous directions, all of which were not downwards, but the sunset itself was magnificent. Its low orange and dusty pink hues merged with the sky beyond the dark tress branches were imposing against the contrast.

At this point, Donghyuck began to feel nervous, thinking that Mark taking too long to answer his question was Mark’s way of showing him that he was upset he would bring up such a thing or feeling hatred towards him.

”I don’t like how I look without them,” Mark said. He was still facing the trees. The wind had made a few leaves swirl into the air and taken them away from his sight. “I look ugly without my glasses on.”

Donghyuck tried to remember what Mark looked like without them, but he couldn’t. He mentally cursed at his younger self for paying too much attention to his toy firetrucks and thought-provoking video games and paying none to what Mark looked like.

”Then show me.”

There was the silence again, the silence that made Donghyuck trepidatious.

Mark took a second to think before he took off his glasses, turning towards Donghyuck.

Beautiful was the first word that came to Donghyuck’s mind. Mark looked good without his glasses on. He was absolutely flawless, and Donghyuck was in awe. Mark’s features were prettier and more clear than when his glasses covered his eyes. His eyes were remarkably resplendent. His eyes were such a pretty shade of brown that they put every other color in the world to shame. Every part of Mark’s face was so ethereal to the red-haired boy, and he loved it. Donghyuck truthfully thought that Mark was one of the most outstandingly beautiful humans he had ever seen in his entire life. “You _do_  look ugly.”

”Told you.”

Donghyuck’s eyes were suddenly drawn to a falling leaf behind Mark. It was falling slowly, far more slow than any other leaf he had ever seen. It was a dark shade of brown, a brown that looked so similar to Mark’s eye color. It was beautiful.

Leaves were beautiful. They were indefinitely radiant, even at such a unlikely time of the year. The shades of brown were each unique, each coming from a different tree, each of a different type, which were all life-bringing. Fall brought so many of them to him, by making them fall off of tree branches, just like Donghyuck had felt when he saw Mark’s true beauty for the first time. Leaves no longer represented death, but rather love, which Donghyuck accepted to be utterly beautiful.

They were _beautiful_ , just like Mark through Donghyuck’s eyes.


End file.
